PublishingDesk – Multilingual Desktop Publishing for Windows
Design flyers, posters, books, newsletters and social-media graphics — with first-class support for Urdu, Arabic, Persian and Pashto. PublishingDesk typesets proper Nastaliq with correct letter-joining and dot placement — the kind of complex-script shaping ordinary word processors can’t do — and lets you mix right-to-left Urdu/Arabic with left-to-right English and numbers on the same line. Lay it all out with layers, master pages and multi-page documents, then export to print-ready PDF.
Download PublishingDesk
Available on the Microsoft Store — free to use, with a one-time Pro upgrade for print-ready output. No subscription, no ads.
Or view the listing at apps.microsoft.com.
Free to use — with a one-time Pro upgrade
The whole designer is free — Urdu/English text, kashida, images, shapes, master pages, autoflow and your own fonts, plus PNG and PDF export (with a small watermark). A one-time Pro upgrade removes the watermark and unlocks PDF for Print (bleed + crop marks), SVG export and Preflight. Pro is a one-time purchase, not a subscription.
Changelog — what’s new in each release
Full release history — the multilingual designer, the Nastaliq/complex-script engine, master pages, find & replace, per-layer opacity, and the freemium Pro features.
View the full changelogUser Guide — every section explained
A plain-English walkthrough of documents, pages, master pages, layers, English and Urdu text, kashida, effects, importing, find & replace, exporting, fonts — and the keyboard shortcuts.
Read the User GuideFeatures
🖋️ True Nastaliq Typesetting
Proper Nastaliq shaping for Urdu, Arabic, Persian and Pashto — letters join correctly with accurate dot placement, the way fine Urdu typesetting should look. A built-in Urdu keyboard (standard, phonetic Roman→Urdu, or system) lets you type straight into the page.
↔️ Kashida (Kasheeda) Justification
Justified Urdu/Arabic lines fill the column by elongating the script’s connecting strokes (tatweel) — not by opening ugly word gaps. It engages on fonts with a real tatweel glyph (e.g. Amiri, Scheherazade, or a kasheeda Nastaliq font you add); other fonts fall back to clean word-spacing.
🔤 Mixed Right-to-Left & Left-to-Right
Put English words and numbers inside a right-to-left Urdu/Arabic line and they sit the right way round automatically. Rich English text gets full control too — fonts, sizes, bold/italic, colour and alignment.
🗂️ Layers, Master Pages & Multi-Page Documents
Stack text, shape and image layers with a Layers panel (lock, show/hide, drag-to-reorder, full z-order). Build multi-page documents with a Pages strip, and design repeating headers/footers/page-numbers once on a master page and apply it where you want.
🎯 Precise Direct Manipulation
Drag to move, resize with rotation-aware handles, and spin with an on-canvas rotate handle (hold Shift to snap to 15°). Smart guides, snapping, grid, rulers (px/mm/cm/in), and align & distribute keep everything tidy. Every numeric field is a spinner that commits on Enter.
✨ Composable Text Effects
Stack outline, glow, shadow, inner-shadow, bevel and fill (solid, gradient or chrome) on both English and Urdu frames. Pick from a live preset gallery or save your own presets — and per-layer opacity is honoured on canvas and in every export.
📄 Templates, Import & Autoflow
Start from a template gallery — paper sizes, social-media presets, print formats, or custom dimensions. Import text and autoflow it across as many pages as it needs, threading the layout through each copy, and import SVG as editable vector shapes.
🔍 Find & Replace Everywhere
Search and replace across all text frames — Urdu and English. Type Urdu via the in-app keyboard, or toggle it off to find embedded English; matches highlight right in their frames.
🖨️ Export & Print
Export to PNG and vector PDF (Urdu shaping preserved as crisp outlines), and — with Pro — SVG, print-ready PDF with bleed and crop marks, and a Preflight check. Print the current page or a range straight from the app.
🔠 Bring Your Own Fonts
Ships with a curated set of free Nastaliq/Arabic fonts (Noto Nastaliq Urdu, Gulzar, Amiri, Scheherazade and more) and uses your installed system fonts too. Drop in any .ttf/.otf — including popular Nastaliq fonts like Jameel Noori — and it appears in the picker.
💾 Autosave & Crash Recovery
Your work is saved to a self-contained .pubdesk file (images embedded), with coalesced undo/redo across every kind of edit. Periodic autosave and crash recovery mean an unexpected close won’t cost you your layout.
🔒 Private by Design
PublishingDesk works entirely offline — no account, no telemetry, nothing leaving your device. Light and dark themes, per-document zoom and remembered window placement round out the everyday polish.
Screenshots
The editor — Urdu Nastaliq and English on one page, with layers and text-effect presets
Latest Release
Version 1.0 — June 2026
The full multilingual designer — Nastaliq typesetting with kashida, templates, layers, master pages, multi-page documents, text effects, autoflow, find & replace, export to PNG/PDF/SVG and print, and the freemium Pro upgrade.